Policies & Terms

Hosting Australia Policies, Terms and Conditions

Hosting Australia provides web hosting to clients worldwide, and we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. All clients of Hosting Australia are subject to the following terms of service:

You agree to use all Hosting Australia services and facilities at your own risk. Hosting Australia specifically disclaims all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Hosting Australia be liable for any loss, or loss of data, or other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Hosting Australia harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against Hosting Australia, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by customer, it's agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Hosting Australia against liabilities arising out of Any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with Hosting Australia's server.

Hosting Australia reserves the right to intervene with any of the sites hosted on its servers in the interest of its customers. Any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party Copyright infringement any defective products sold to customer from Hosting Australia's server. Hosting Australia shall be the sole judge of what violates this Policy.

All billing and invoicing is handled via our automated billing system. Invoices will be automatically issued to your primary account contact, and copied in to any secondary contacts who have been opted in for invoicing emails. Please ensure all these email addresses are up to date and accurate. We also strongly suggest adding the hosting-australia.com domain to your safe senders list.

Hosting Australia accept no responsibility for accounts that are effected by inaccurate or out of date email contacts. Payment cycles for recurring products are monthly, 6 monthly or 12 monthly, depending upon the plan.

Monthly and 6 Monthly accounts are issued 14 days prior to the due date.

12 Monthly accounts will be issued 28 days prior to the due date

Project or design invoice payment terms will be at the discretion of your account manager, but are generally 7 day terms.

We accept Visa, Master Card and Bank Transfer*

* Please note: Bank Transfer is accepted for 12 monthly or 6 monthly billing cycles or larger invoices only. Payments made by bank transfer will take between 3-5 business days, due to bank and internal processing times. Clients should be aware of these processing times when paying via bank transfer, to avoid delays in services.

Clients are encouraged to pay by credit card as it is the easiest way to handle payment at this time, and prevents issues with late payment fees and/or terminated accounts. Their are no contract periods but for each successive period, your contract is automatically renewed unless we are notified otherwise.

Hosting Australia will always attempt to honor payment/billing terms and conditions of clients from existing companies that have merged with Hosting Australia. However, this may not always be possible and our afore mentioned payment terms will apply in most cases.

Payment terms are subject to change, at the discretion of Hosting Australia Management.

Clients that have opted for Credit Card payment and have a valid stored card added via our Client Area or over the phone will able to use our automated payment system. In this case, you will be sent a notice of the Invoice being generated either 14 days(For monthly invoices) or 30 days(For domains or annual invoices) prior to the due date. This invoice notice will advise of the fact you have opted for a Credit Card payment, and advise of the details of the card payment will be taken from.

The payment will then be automatically taken on the Due Date of the invoice, via your nominated card and you will be sent a copy of the paid invoice for your records.

NOTE: Please ensure your contact email is current and correct. Hosting Australia will accept no responsibility for payments taken automatically from cards, when email notices have been issued to an invalid or out of date address. Hosting Australia adheres to online credit card payment regulations, to support this our billing system tracks a number of details including IP Addresses, dates, times and history of notification email history.

All accounts are billed according to the dates they were first activated on.

Late fees may be applied after 10 days past due. This is $5 or 7.5% of the total invoice amount, whichever is greater. Late fees are enforced to cover the time spent managing and recovering overdue accounts.

Invoices that go past 14 days overdue, may be automatically suspended by our billing platform, unless other arrangements have been made. If there are multiple services on an account, Hosting Australia reserves the right to suspend all/any services if an invoice is past 14 days overdue. Please note, if you are paying via bank transfer, sites will not automatically be un-suspended until payment has been cleared into the nominated HA Bank Account. This can take up to 48 hours to occur.

If an account is suspended due to late payment, the account must be paid in full for un-suspension, including any Late Fees that may apply. (See further information under Limitation of Liability regarding suspended sites)

IMPORTANT: Payment must have cleared into our accounts in full for the service to unsuspended. Payment notification notices are not accepted as proof of payment.

Credit Card payments will result in immediate un-suspension.

If invoices remain unpaid for longer than 30 days, your account may be terminated.

As detailed in the Late Payment section above, all payments on domains must be made in full and processed before a domain renewal will be processed. As per Hosting Australia's Limitation of Liability, Hosting Australia are not held responsible for any loss of service or domain registrations lapsing due to overdue or unpaid invoices.

Adequate time is provided to make payment on a domain, as well as additional time for overlooked or missed payments, which will trigger payment reminders.

Wholesale and reseller accounts may operate on different overdue action paths or late fee policies as defined above, depending on the size and type of account. Please contact your Account Manager for details.

Should a reseller service reach an overdue period of 90 days or more, Hosting Australia will attempt to contact the reseller by all available avenues to obtain a payment. Should the account continue to remain overdue, Hosting Australia reserves to the right to contact all customers under the reseller partition and advise them of the situation. Hosting Australia may either take the accounts over or advise the client on options of moving to another provider.

Hosting Australia shall not be held liable resulting for any lost income should this situation occur due to unpaid invoices.

Late Payment fees on reseller accounts will be either Tier 1 - 3.5% or Tier 2 - 7.5%.

Your annual or monthly hosting package includes standard support and assistance. This includes items such as setting up your email clients(Normal user environment), troubleshooting server based issues or mail flow problems, advice on the use of Hosting Australia products. and other such tasks. You can find more information regarding that HERE.

Some tasks will also incur a charge, and these are generally broken up into two types:

- Website Design or Support- Hosting and Related Products.

Website Design or Support charges are for items related directly to your website and work carried out within the site. These are generally in addition to your monthly or Annual Hosting fees. For example, a new Website Build or modifying the contact details on your website.

These charges also cover additional support directly related to faults being caused by your onsite computer software or equipment. Clients who have created non-standard hosting or email environments, for example custom on-server DNS settings, advanced CRON jobs, externally handled mail (MX) services, externally handled hosting/website services, off-server DNS zones or a number of other advanced configuration may also incur charges related to troubleshooting and support of these issues.

Hosting Australia Support staff will attempt to advise when the above charges may apply, in the case where support staff omit advising the client, charges will be applied according to the the descriptions provided on the Support Rates & Descriptions page, as linked at the bottom of this section.

Issues relating directly to our server are generally covered by the recurring hosting fees you pay for your services, and are generally referred to as Server Based Support. You will also find additional information regarding this via the linked article at the bottom of this section.

Hosting and Related Products include such things as your recurring domain renewals, ongoing hosting fees, SSL Certificates, SPAM Protect and other web hosting related products. More information on these products can be found under the various menu items on our website.

Note: In the case of site hacking or malware...our support team may need to carry out unapproved work on your site, or suspend your services to preserve server integrity. In these cases, efforts will be made to contact you, but if we are not successful, work may be carried out and charges invoiced as necessary to protect the server and services.

You can find further details on the different types of charges and various examples, as well as additional information on the above mentioned policies on the Support Rates and Descriptions Knowledgebase Article found HERE.

Under normal operating procedures, Hosting Australia does not offer refunds on any Hosting, Domain or related services. There may be exceptions to this rule for promotional purposes or for new product sign ups eg our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. If this is the case, this will be clearly outlined in the product description.

Other, non hosting or domain products may be eligible for refunds in certain circumstances if within 7 days of the payment being made. These products will have these conditions and criteria outlined in the product description.

In addition to the above terms, when you accept a design quotation with Hosting Australia, we request a 40% start up payment, with the balance due on completion of the project. In some cases, your account manager may choose to adjust this fee.

NOTE - Once work has commenced, this amount is non refundable. This is normally with 24 hours of the payment being received.

Services will not be fully made active until the invoice ais paid in full, unless prior arrangements are made.

In the event you wish to cancel the project prior to completion, for whatever reason, the 40% start up fee is non refundable. Any other costs or work completed on the project up until the point of cancellation, will also be invoiced at this point. Once these amounts are paid, you will be given access to any applicable products and/or services, to do with as you wish.

During the build process, our design team will discuss the function, style and layout of your website or project. You are welcome to provide as much or as little input as you desire.

You will also be given several opportunities to review and modify the site during the design phase. Our quotations allow for minor amendments to the site, providing it doesn't require a large structural rebuild or modification.

Please note, should you choose to waive the the opportunity to have input into the site build, and have Hosting Australia design a site on your behalf, eg you do not wish to assist with the style and layout of the site, the above mentioned modifications may incur further costs.

We suggest to all clients that you provide input during the design process, so the end product is suitable to your purpose and tastes, but we do understand that some clients do not have the time to do so and as such, our design process makes allowances for time short clients.

All services provided by Hosting Australia may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any Federal, State or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Hosting Australia and its employees from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party. Our acceptable use policy is actively and strictly enforced. Offending content or users are suspended from our network, usually as soon as they are discovered, although we will always inform you when and why any action has been taken. Pornography is prohibited on all Hosting Australia servers. This includes sites that include sexually explicit or hardcore images and/or advertising.

Subscriber acknowledges that the service provided is of such a nature that service can be interrupted for many reasons other than the negligence of the company and that damages resulting from any interruption of service are difficult to ascertain. Therefore, subscriber agrees that the company shall not be liable for any damages arising from such causes beyond the direct and exclusive control of the company.

Subscriber further acknowledges that the company's liability for its own negligence may not in any event exceed an amount equivalent to charges payable by subscriber for services during the period damages occurred. In no event shall the company be liable for any special or consequential damages, loss or injury.

Illegality In any form, including but not limited to the unauthorised distribution or copying of copyrighted software or other data, harassment, fraud, trafficking in obscene material. Undesirable Content Certain types of content are not allowed on our network. We do not host adult content of any description. Content relating to Hacking, Cracking, Warez and IRC is not allowed. Software, audio and video downloads may only be hosted if you are the writer and copyright owner of the resources or you have a right to distribute the materials. Accounts suspended due to content or AUP violation are not refunded under any circumstances.

Hosting Australia offers Unlimited Bandwidth on some Hosting Packages. This essentially means that no limits are applied to your bandwidth usage, however a precautionary cap or ceiling is set on all accounts, to prevent malware or hacking scripts exploiting the server. Providing your webhosting and email usage is deemed to be within a fair and reasonable limit for the type of site and package you are on and that it doesn't effect server resources.

Should your accounts bandwidth usage reach a stage that is deemed to have surpassed a fair and reasonable level, Hosting Australia administrators will contact you to discuss the situation and what options are available.

The following scripts are banned from use on our servers and may not be uploaded or run. Reasons for banning them include adverse effects on server load, invitations to hackers/spammers/criminal activity, etc.

Sites that are detected to be using any of the above scripts, infected with Malware or in someway compromised, will on most occasions immediately suspended, and in some cases further work may be required by our staff.

In the event you cannot be contacted regarding this work, Hosting Australia reserves the right to take further action and carry out work on your site to preserve server integrity. Charges may apply for this work.

Hosting Australia guarantees 99.9% uptime of all services, including email and hosting. In the event we do not achieve these targets, partial or whole refunds or account credits may be applicable. These will be at the discretion of Hosting Australia management. The uptime guarantee only applies to Retail accounts and some resller/wholesale services. The guarantee does not apply to sub-clients/end-users of reseller or wholesale services.

Hosting Australia servers maintain secure off server backups. These are kept according to an archive schedule, so that in the even of a unrecoverable server issue, Hosting Australia Administrators are able to roll back to a particular date to restore services.

As part of this process, Hosting Australia has made backups available for customer use were available. Access to the backup is via Hosting Australia's support team only. Further information regarding the costs of restoration and the backup cycles are available in our Knowledgebase.

As outlined in the Limitation of Liability section below, Hosting Australia does not accept liability should these backups fail and/or not be available for restoration of sites or data at any given time.

From time to time, our Server Administration team may be required to update server software, for example pHp or SQL versions. This is done to maintain server security, performance and stability. Our server team will always carefully assess these upgrades, and choose a version that is stable and secure. This may not always be the latest version, as new releases quite often need to have patches and updates applied.

In some cases, and in particular on older or out of dates sites, this may cause compatibility issues. Hosting Australia is happy to assist you to work through these issues, but design charges may apply if there is a requirement to rewrite or update code in your website. This will be assessed on a case by case basis.

Our server also operates a cloud based operating system, which allows you to upgrade or downgrade certain software versions via your cPanel. (Note, a small charge does apply for this feature)

Generally, we will give adequate notice to clients of upgrades, however, should a security issue develop that is deemed server critical, some upgrades may be performed with as little as 4 hours notice. In this case, our server and support teams will always work with you to resolve any site compatibility issues.

Hosting Australia shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from Hosting Australia servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, Hosting Australia shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any web site from one of Hosting Australia servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

Hosting Australia will not be responsible for any disruption to services due to site suspension due to, but not limited to the following:Compromised website files Compromised email accounts Late Payment of Invoices Breaches of our Acceptable Use Policy (as outlined above) Use of Banned Scripts (as outlined above)

Hosting Australia cannot be held liable for system downtime, crashes, or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicted estimate of profits in which a client would have gained if their site was functioning. Certain services provided by Hosting Australia are resold. Thus, certain equipment, routing, software, and programming used by Hosting Australia are not directly owned or written by Hosting Australia. Moreover, Hosting Australia holds no responsibility for the use of our clients accounts. If any terms or conditions are failed to be followed, the account in question will be automatically deactivated. We reserve the right to remove any account without advanced notice for any reason without restitution as Hosting Australia sees fit.

Furthermore, Hosting Australia retains the right to change any or all of the above Policies, Guidelines, and Disclaimer without notification. In an effort to protect our clients and site visitors privacy and rights, Hosting Australia has established a Privacy Policy which explains what information we gather on visitors and what we do with information that we gather. This Privacy Policy governs the manner in which Hosting Australia collects, uses, maintains and discloses information collected from users of this Web site (each, a "User").

Users' privacy is very important to Hosting Australia. We are committed to safeguarding the information Users entrust to Hosting Australia. The Information We Collect Hosting Australia collects personally identifiable information from Users through online forms for ordering products and services. We may also collect information about how Users use our Web site, for example, by tracking the number of unique views received by the pages of the Web site or the domains from which Users originate. We use "cookies" to track how Users use our Web site.

Hosting Australia may use personally identifiable information collected through our Web site to contact Users regarding products and services offered by Hosting Australia and its trusted affiliates, independent contractors and business partners, and otherwise to enhance Users' experience with Hosting Australia and such affiliates, independent contractors and business partners. At no time will Hosting Australia's database of users ever be sold to any entity for the purpose of marketing or mailing lists. Personal information will not be sold or otherwise transferred to our business partners without your prior consent, except that we will disclose the information we collect to third parties when, in our good faith judgement, we are obligated to do so under applicable laws.

Hosting Australia reserves the right to add, revise, amend, or modify the Agreements published on our Website at any time & in any manner. Notice of any revision, amendment, or modification will be posted in accordance with our policies.